Wandering in the
Traditions
A Discourse Given by Sri Da Avabhasa
on March 5, 1993
DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, when I was
nearly 30, before I had heard of You or met You, I received
profound demonstrations that there is Something beyond me
that is Greater than my own skin and my own
energy.
SRI DA AVABHASA: It has to be,
otherwise how could you exist? You did not make yourself.
What the Nature of that Something is, is to be Realized, of
course, but obviously there is Something Greater than
yourself.
DEVOTEE: Soon after that I
discovered You as my Teacher. But I used this presumption
that the Divine “Created” all and that I am responsible to
relate to that Divine Presence–to insulate myself against
Your personal, human, bodily demands. You Told me just last
week that I had only chosen to embrace parts of this
practice, and I had not embraced the practice altogether. I
can see my error.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Do I make your
karmas? Do I make your reactivity? Do I make your
resistance? Your limitations? Your errors? Your
difficulties? The bad things that happen? Do I make them? I
do not. The Divine does not make these things. The display
of conditions is made by conditional impulses. Conditional
causes make conditional effects. The conditional realm
exists. The Divine is the Condition of all this. Therefore,
the Divine is to be Realized by transcending causes and
effects. By transcending egoic “self-possession” and
separateness, you Realize the Divine.
You, however, want to believe that
the Divine is in charge, that the Divine is responsible for
all these things and, therefore, you choose to feel negative
about the Divine until the Divine changes, all of these
things. The causes and effects in your own life are of your
own making, and the making of many other influences, or
causes, that are beyond your comprehension, and beyond even
your observation. But just because something is beyond your
observation does not mean it is God.
The other night we were talking
about the ascension of Jesus. The ascension of Jesus was not
based on an historical experience of an historical reality.
It is propaganda, The official doctrine of Christianity,
which is associated with the ascension of Jesus, came out of
a confrontation between two major factions in the growing
Christian movement. The orthodox faction won. The opposing
faction were the gnostics, who thought that human beings are
sparks of the Divine, independent of the bodily mode of
manifestation, and, therefore, that human beings need to
step apart from the body-mind and its relations, dissociate
from conditions, and rise independent of the body and
conditionality to the Divine Sphere of Being. The orthodox
group, which was associated with some of the traditional
notions of the Jewish religion–as well as, rather exoteric
religious tendencies altogether–did not want to affirm such
a thing.
According to, the cosmology of the
time, the Earth was a big, flat place, and the spirits of
the dead could rise up into the firmament of stars, above
which there is a great crystal dome where the Divine
Resides. The orthodox faction, or the faction whose doctrine
became the orthodoxy of Judaism, affirmed that God is the
“Creator” of all this and, therefore, here to serve human
beings in their bodily life. The orthodox Jews communicated
an orthodox mythology that was not based on real experience
but that simply opposed the gnostic notions, many of which
were apparently associated with Jesus himself, if we can
presume Jesus was an historical figure. It was important for
the orthodox faction, therefore, to affirm the Divine as the
“Creator” and humanity as bodily based. Jesus, then, had to
be a full participant in their mythology. And so, on the
basis of what is a self-evidently untrue cosmology today,
Jesus was declared to have floated up into the sky, and, by
his ascension, to have gone beyond the firmament of the
stars to the crystal sphere above.
So–what was the doctrine of the
ascension of Jesus? Propaganda, a description designed to
counter the theology proposed by an opposing
faction.
I am not the only one who concludes
this. Examine the scholarly discussions of Christianity.
This, in general, is the conclusion of theologians, except
for those who maintain a more, fundamentalist or otherwise
traditional view. The doctrine of the ascension of Jesus
affirms the notion of the Divine as the Maker of all that
appears, whereas in Reality you, and all other powers and
limiting conditional forces, are making this appearance. The
Divine merely Pervades the conditional realms and is to be
Realized by your transcending your “sinfulness”, your
“missing’ the mark your separativeness, :your dissociation,
your egoic “self-possession”.
The doctrine of the ascension of
Jesus is the affirmation of the “Creator-God” and of the end
product of such a “Creator-God”, which is that the presumed
Divine is making bodily-based humanity and all bodily
beings. The New Testament is full of such propaganda, not
only the, ascension of Jesus but all kinds of other
presumptions about the bodily-based nature of humanity. For
example, it is proposed that when you die, you do not go to
heaven but you go to a temporary realm where you wait to be
re-inserted into the body at the time of judgment, when all
the dead will be raised from their graves, wherever they
are. This is why in the Christian tradition in general the
bodiess of the dead are not cremated but they are buried, so
that they can be raised out of the grave. The “Creator-God”
notion and the philosophy of a bodily-based mankind are
fundamental to the exoteric Christian doctrine, which
opposes esoteric, and particularly gnostic, doctrine. It is
from this philosophical conflict that the legends and
mythologies of the New Testament arose. And, as I have said,
not only I am saying this. Examine the tradition of
scholarship. “Consider” it.
Those of you who were involved in
the Christian tradition believe these stories as if they are
polaroids of historical documentation. They are propaganda,
an effort to enforce belief, and also to enforce the
authority of a particular institution. But just because a
certain notion is the belief of a certain sect does not make
that notion historically true. It is simply the preference
of the sect. One must ask, “Where is the evidence for this
claim?” The mere fact that something is written in a book
that contains the propaganda of a particular religious
institution does not make it historically true. The doctrine
of Christianity has been used to enforce belief and the
authority of its institutional leaders now for 2000 years,
so long that people feel they must either accept it or
not.
People are so anxious to feel
protected and associated with something that will reduce
their fear that they would rather just accept the propaganda
as the absolute Divine Revelation and not inspect it
further.
DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, You have Said
that the fundamental purpose of exoteric religion is to be
consoling. And the most consoling message is that all you
have to do to be relieved is believe in the
savior.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Of course if you
really exercised the heart motive of faith, then you would
transcend egoity!
Jesus is just another God-idea
communicated through a certain mythology that is full of
propaganda, but Christianity is not the only tradition that
did this. All the traditions do this, sooner or later or
even at the very beginning. All the traditions indulge in
such exercises, because they are so much involved in the
politics and the social implications of religion. And they
are addressing rather ignorant people, ordinary people,
people under the stress of ordinary life. All the messages
of religion, therefore, tend to become reduced to the
commonplace, to ego-supporting, ego-consoling
messages.
DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, I am feeling
more and more the mass of uninspected beliefs that I have
carried over from my childhood and from who knows where
else, and they do affect me. Speaking of consoling religious
notions, what seems to me to be the ultimate consolation is
that God is both Omnipotent and All-Good. I was taught this
as a child, yet I never could accept it. It was very
disturbing to me that the adults were telling me that God is
All-Good and Omnipotent when it is so obviously
untrue.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Apparently untrue
because of your experience of the world, your experience of
conditional existence. Your experience of conditional
existence does not make the Goodness and Omnipotence of God
untrue, however. There is just a false connection being made
between the Omnipotence and Absoluteness and Goodness and
All-Blissfulness of the Divine and conditional Nature. The
fact that the Divine is All Pervading, Absolute, and
All-Bliss need not be Shown in the form of conditions,
because you are making conditions and because all kinds of
other beings and influences and forces are making
conditions. You believe that God is making them, but such is
a conventional, exoteric belief.
DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, when You,
bring Your Argument that God is not in charge and that
conditional appearances are made by conditional forces, it
is obviously true to me. Nevertheless, I have a deep,
underlying presumption that there is something wrong with
saying that God does not make the conditional world. This
presumption comes from my background as a Christian, and I
had not really been aware of it until tonight.
SRI DA AVABHASA: What makes you
think God does make the conditional world? Have you ever
observed God making it? Just because you are “possessed” by
the world, bodily “self-possessed”, you indulge in fantasies
about the ultimate Nature of the Reality behind it. You do
not make these presumptions or develop this propaganda based
on God-Realization. Do you think that the makers of the
traditional myths and the usual propaganda of religion were
God-Realizers? They were not! They were. ordinary people.
The communications of the God-Realizers, the great Siddhas,
the Masters who were truly Realized — of course they
Realized to various degrees, not all were great Realizers —
were often limited too, and historically conditioned.
Nonetheless their Word is the great Word among people. But,
in general, ordinary, not God Realized, people have made the
institutions, the propaganda, the arguments, the myths, the
legends, for reasons that have nothing to do with God
Realization but that have only to do with the controlling of
ordinary humanity ,in its gross aggressiveness.
Fundamentally, social control is the
reason for conventional religiosity and exoteric religious
messages, because human beings are egoically
“self-possessed” and aggressive and dangerous. The impulse
to control these qualities in people is where exoteric
religion comes from. And so, bodily “self-possessed”, then,
people presume that God must be the “Creator” of all this.
Somehow that presumption justifies not God Realization but
moral imperatives for, easing social stresses.
Has all of this culture been
developed just, for that, when a little bit of appeal to
intelligence would have made you not so dangerous to begin
with?
Conventional religion is an effort
to control people. God-Realization is another matter! And,
of course, the intention to control people can be justified
because things are so terrible. Human beings are aggressive,
since they are not Enlightened and not God-Realized, and
they are threatening one another constantly. Therefore, the
usual God-messages, by the time they, reach ordinary people,
have never, contained much great wisdom to deal with
anything. Such messages are reduced to moral imperatives, in
an effort to somehow create a political and social solution
to the ordinary difficulties of human beings. Such religion
is not about God-Realization. It is about politics. The
ascension of Jesus is about politics! It never happened! The
claim, that it happened is political and institutional. Yet
there are in some sense good intentions behind such claims,
because of the gross difficulties of mankind. Therefore,
people are told by the conventional religions to believe
this, that, and the other thing and thereby, somehow – or
other, stop being dangerous to others.
In Reality, there is a Great
Condition, and you are self contracted within It. It is not
that existence, is a problem, except that you are making it
so. Conditional existence must be understood and transcended
when Reality, As It Is, is Revealed, when the
Realization of Reality As It Is Awakens. This is My
Wisdom-Teaching. I do not propose conditional existence as a
problem, nor do I propose that it is something of Divine
making. Conditional existence is not either of those
extremes.
DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, I also wish to
confess to You that You have purified me of my attachment to
Buddhism. I was ordained as a priest at the time when I
first contacted You, or You contacted me. The first time I
saw You, on video, I immediately knew with absolute
certainty that I was no longer a Buddhist priest but that I
am Your devotee.
SRI DA AVABHASA:: You are still
carrying alll this baggage with you, nonetheless. But you,
in particular, are not just a Buddhist, by experience and
association and attachment. You are also a Christian
Scientist by virtue of your family, background and,
therefore, you are involved with Christianity. These
religions seem to have come to you from outside you, but
they all correspond to your own dilemma or problem–and
there they are, both extremes in your own person, the
Western extreme of propaganda and the Eastern extreme of
propaganda. Your mind is full of it.
You must deal with yourself. The
reasons for believing in either one, or in anything, even
your coming to Me as part of your search, all of that must
be dealt with. You must realize the right reasons for being
in My Company. That means you must deal with yourself. I am
not here to be the center of a cult or to justify, your
adherence to your own propaganda or to whatever you
inherited. You must examine Reality directly. You must
examine your reasons for believing this, that, and the other
thing. You have reasons for adhering to mind-forms,
traditions, propaganda, images. Even your visions! You think
at times that you are having a vision of Me. Sometimes
perhaps you are, and sometimes you are not. It may be a
vision of Me because it looks like Me, and it may reveal
something to you about right devotion to Me and right
practice in My Company, but more often than not the vision
is made entirely of your own mind.
You have read of My own Sadhana in
The Knee .of Listening. There I was in Ganeshpuri in the
yard at Swami Muktananda’s Ashram, having visions of Jesus,
visions of Mary, “Go get a rosary,” all kinds of ecstatic,
and most profound; impulses — it was a wash. It was a bath.
It was a purification. All that content, all that
expression, was lived through, done, yes, but in itself it
was a wash. It was bathed away. And eventually there was
nothing to it, not the slightest thing to it, no more
Christian mind..
Why did these visions arise to Me?
Because of My experience, by birth, and perhaps because of
other associations that needed to be washed. Even at the
time I knew what all that was about, but at the same time
the impulses and the visions were, there.
DEVOTEE: And You did not shrink from
the reality of the process.
SRI DA AVABHASA: Not at all. I
endured it, I embraced it, I did the whole thing, and it was
washed. The Great Divine Force was rendered by this
body-mind into its own forms and presumptions, which were
boiled up and had to be lived. The period was rather brief,
actually, jus ‘a few weeks. I suffered it, I enjoyed it, I
was ecstatic, I was “Crazy”. It was a wash. It was a bath.
And it was obvious to Me what was happening even there, in
Ganeshpuri, in the garden. I knew it was all bullshit. I
knew it was My own mind. But I also knew I had to go through
it.
And so I did. And then there was no
more of that mind. It was absolutely gone.
DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, paradoxically
one of the most inspiring statements You make in The Knee
of Listening is Your Confession, during Your pilgrimage
through Europe, of your utter faith in the Catholic
Church.
SRI DA AVABHASA Yes, although I was
never a Catholic.
DEVOTEE: I know. But it shows Your
utter willingness to go through whatever You had
to.
SRI DA AVABHASA:- Allow it, do it,
experience it, however it appears, just live it right out
there. And then it was washed. There is nothing there now,
nothing whatsoever. You must be washed, too, of all the
signs of your egoity, all your egoic “self-possession”, all
your propaganda, all your past experience, all your
bullshit.
Being in My Company is about being
washed of all that, but you must also deal with it. As My
devotee, you must deal with it, and you must be washed. This
devotion to Me, this Ishta-Guru-Bhakti, is about being
purified, about being washed, but you must be a participant
in it and not insist on indulging in your own program, not
really practicing and ignoring My Admonitions–no. Do the
practice for real. Keep to Me, and go through the process of
being purified. It is difficult? Fine. That is how it
is–selfbound, egoically “self-possessed”, aggressive,
stupid, full of programs, propaganda, egoic
“self-possession”–of course! It is a wash. Of course it is
difficult, like a fast. Of course it is so. Tapas–that is
how it must be. It must be done.
DEVOTEE: Beloved Master, I always
felt that I did not ,carry anything of my Jewish beliefs
into my life. Now I see that I clearly have avoided
inspecting what I have carried over about God, and that I
have also avoided the reality of death. These two key points
are very real and very complex.
SRI DA AVABHASA: All that–and a
great deal of other insane business, your conditioning by
virtue of your own self-contraction. You have inherited all
kinds of things, all kinds of presumptions, in an immense
and complicated psychological pattern and life-pattern. You
are dramatizing it in your emotional sexual life and
everywhere else, too. You are not here just to act out that
dramatization. You are here to be washed by your right and
real and consistent and serious participation in My Company.
If you are here to do otherwise, to be mediocre and cling to
Me just to receive love and make a cult around Me, I am not
interested. Doing that has nothing to do with Me, nothing to
do with My Word, nothing to do with the Truth, nothing to do
with sadhana.
You must inspect all of your
uninspected content. Be washed of all of it. It is rather
dramatic, actually, to be so washed. It is not merely an
external bath but an internal one. All your images; all your
presumptions, all your attitudes, all your games –all must
be washed away, shitted out, gone. That is what it takes. If
you want to move on to the advanced and the ultimate stages
of the Way of the Heart, you must endure this bath and not
evade it with all your petty, conventional
religiosity.
The beginnings of the Way of the
Heart are most profound.
Therefore, exhibit the signs of
applying yourself to the Way of life I have Given you, and
stop modeling your life after other traditions and other
examples. You want to repeat the examples of the traditions,
the Christian tradition or any other, but they are just
examples of religious propaganda. The Way of life in which
you are here to invest yourself, then, voluntarily, as My
devotee, is the Way of the Heart in My Company. The example
for you that is important is the example of those who really
do this sadhana.
In your limitation, you keep wanting
to reduce Me to conversation with you, reflecting onto Me
your imageries, propaganda, mindset, all your egoic notions,
so that you cannot even see Me As I Am. Conventional
religious piety and the cloister in any tradition is not an
example of how the Way of the Heart works out. It is not!,
It is just the propaganda of any religion, shown through the
example of a few people who are apparently serious. That is
all, and it is their business. If it is also your business,
go to the cloister, then. But if your business is here with
Me, then invest yourself in the Way of the Heart, and then
see, what the changes look like. Look to others more
advanced than you, and see what their changes look like. See
them for real, instead of requiring even Me and the Kanyas
to adapt to you in your mediocrity, in your wandering in
your past and in your egoic “self-possession”, and your
clinging to, the traditional orientation, your background
and your family.
The Way of the Heart is a very
specific. process, and unlike the traditions in many ways.
Its signs are unique. Start noticing them! Deal with your
impulses. Deal with your experiences. Overcome your egoity.
Be purified. Get down to the practice of this Way of life
for real. Stop wandering in the traditions and in your past
and in your egoic “self-possession” altogether. Do so, and
then you will be fit for My most Profound Company. Do not
use Me merely to justify your own impulses and your illusions and fantasies about the
traditions.
“Consider” My Word and apply,
yourself to it for real. Do not indulge, in fantasies and
egoic impulses. Deal with all of it, everything that you are
about. That is what dealing withyourself day by day in My
Company is about–dealing with all, of it, every fraction of
it, vigorously, intensively, seriously.
“HEAR ME HEART-DEEP” A Guide to the
Listening-Hearing Process in the Way of the Heart as
Revealed by the Divine World-Teacher and True Heart-Master,
Da Avabhasa (The “Bright”). Only edition: 1994.